Catching my balance.

Garden & whatnot

05 September 2011

This summer has been a wild, wild ride, on all levels, with a whole lotta work to boot. Some big changes that have left me scrambling just to hang on-- but exciting things on the horizon if I manage to do that. In the meantime, it's a bit of a bumpy ride. Which is all to say that if I haven't answered an email you sent me in June...

Speaking of bumpy rides, we made it through the Week Of Natural Disaster (TM) in Virginny, starting, of course, with the earthquake. I know a 5.8 isn't much to old hands at these things, but it was big doin's down here. Not nearly as big as some people seemed to think (yelps that the end times had come seemed, well, misplaced), but big enough to knock things off shelves at work and at home. There've been aftershocks, but I've only felt two, one of which was a 4.9 that woke up Mr. P and The Kitteh. I, however, was already awake, despite it being 1 in the morning. In both the lead up to the actual earthquake and to the late night, sizeable aftershock, had a headache that went away immediately after the earth started shaking. Which either means that I'm like the cats and dogs that freak out just before an earthquake, or it's just a coincidence.

Then five days later, Hurricane Irene. While we were in it, it really didn't seem all that bad-- very, very wet, and sometimes pretty windy, but we left the front door open (just the glass outer door closed) through the duration, so it didn't seem too worrisome. Later, we found out we were just lucky.

I took this on the way to work on Saturday-- a week later. That's the roof leaning against the front of the house. Mr. P passes this way most days and said for most of the week the top was open and you could see right in-- for the first couple of days with the tree still inside. We know quite a few people who lost power-- some for more than a week. We only lost it in short bursts (when we heard transformers blowing up nearby-- probably from trees landing on them). We did lose internet for a week..... Yeah, really not anything to complain about.

The storm blew away our internet, but also brought in a lot of rain and a whole week of cooler tempertures, which was actually pretty awesome. The garden did Not. A. Damn. Thing. this year, pointedly refusing to thrive. I got beans. That is all. Not one tomato (despite having a dozen plants, different varieties). No cucumbers. Even the flowers have refused to bloom. Actually, most things have looked terribly diseased. But, weirdly, some things seemed to like the abuse of Hurrican Irene dropping ten inches of water and little (and not so little) branches all over them.

I've planted these flowers for three years and this is the first time one has bloomed-- which it has done four times since Irene.

All summer I've had morning glory vines, but no flowers....

And then there's the tomatillo plant, which grew very tall and looked healthy, until we got back from Maine and found two thirds of the leaves had been stripped off, by this:

An enormous tomato horn worm. Since the plant hadn't done aaaaaanything, I just left it out there. The day after Mr. P and I investigated this thing it disappeared.... we assume some bird's super duper dinner. Two days later? Hurricane. Two days later? Three tomatillos finally started growing. Perhaps I just have masochistic plants?

Black courdoroy. I saw a picture of some chick in a magazine wearing knickers and thought, hmmmm.... those look kinda cool. I mean, they kind of remind me of being a kid in the 70s when I feel like I saw people sporting knickers. But I thought, where would I be able to get knickers? Wait! I know! I'll make some!

So I did. I put a shiny button on the cuffs.

Spent a looooot of time reading theory and philosophy today for a project that totally snuck up on me.... Damn those stealth academic projects! In between reading I put some of my haul from the farmer's market into action:

First apple pie of the season. And it is yummy, boy. Ohmnomnom. So I guess all in all not a bad weekend. I had to go to work on Saturday, but got enough done that I didn't have to go in today (the day of the labor), which would have been kind of depressing. Here's hoping that things let up so I can catch up with laundry and novel reading and maybe even blogging and not going into the office.

I just love vintage patterns. This one is from the 1940s. I found it in a box at a Goodwill. I've made a bunch and sold them, so I made some more... but I'm thinking maybe I might keep one for myself....

26 June 2010

Someone sent me this link yesterday and it is just the Coolest. Stuff. Ever. I so want the monkeys. And the surprised kangaroo. The deer. All of it. Crocheted, people, that stuff is cro-cheted.

Other than that it's been a crazy busy couple of weeks. Mr. P is still in Louisiana getting his art on. I'm glad he's doing the project, but I'm ready for him to be home. The house refuses to clean itself, and the garden refuses to weed itself. Or grow, really, except the weeds, which grow like... uhm.... weeds. And then there's work where things just won't write themselves, data won't gather itself, reports won't complete themselves, budgets just won't balance themselves. Ah, the end of the fiscal year, sliding into the same week as one of our biggest programs of the year, in the same week that a multi-faceted complicated and important grant application is due. Why won't someone come serve me cocktails?

I did get to watch a hummingbird yesterday morning, though. It was flitting around while I was watering the plants. I'd say that was the highpoint of my week.

12 June 2010

I'm having a crazy busy summer.... and it's only June. It's good in some ways.... other ways I could live without, but you take the bad with the good, I suppose. I'm hoping in coming weeks to have more time to spend on things I like, though I think to get there I'll need to dedicate a chunk of my meager spare time to tasks that I would reeeeally rather live without.... like housecleaning. But at least the backyard is looking pretty:

Green onions are looking good.... but everything else is either stunted or never sprouted :( I'm hoping that improves. In the meantime, the leeks I planted last year are bolting, and it's too pretty to cut them down....

16 May 2010

This is probably all we'll get this year, but its twice as much as last year or the year before. I planted a few strawberry plants the spring after we moved in, but each year they have been devoured by slugs, birds, chipmunks, squirrels, whatever. The slugs were definitely having a party when I picked these, and the next day Mr. P spotted a squirrel coming out with a berry that he enjoyed while perched on the fence. I kind of gave up on the strawberry patch being for our benefit after the first spring, so I'm grateful for this little bounty.

Besides, they seem to be hybridizing with all the wild strawberry that grows all over our yard, so most likely there won't be any real fruits on it next year anyway. In the meantime, things are starting to sprout in the garden and in the pots on the deck. I love when things start sprouting-- just love watching nature do its thing. Which in many places means going on without my intervention-- for the second year in a row I have black seed lettuce growing in the corner because it self-seeded.

In the meantime, most of the plants that made it through the winter are starting to bolt-- the green onions, the leeks, the rosemary, and the sage-- which I'd never seen bolt before and has lovely little purple flowers. Neat! Can't wait until things start fruiting... If only they'd self weed. Sigh. Of course a weed is just a plant growing where I don't want it, so it's doing it's own nature thing.

28 April 2010

The fall after we moved into our house I planted these irises. We have one really lovely neighbor, an elderly gentleman who spends a lot of time in his garden. He has two gardening drugs of choices: tomatoes and irises. He grows the bulbs in buckets in the back of his yard, and that fall he gave me a bag full of bulbs. I planted them, excited for irises in the spring, since they are one of my favorite flowers. The next spring leaves shot up, but no flowers. I figured it was part of what Mr. P refers to as the soil curse-- we have a lot of unhealthy looking things in our yard, the plants that were here when we got here look mostly unhappy, and half the azaleas I planted last year died, despite care. There are irises by the front walk that put up a lot of leaves, but every spring have only produced a single flower.

And the peas are coming up. Unfortunately, something (I'm pretty sure a chipmunk) came up on the deck and mowed down every.last.sunflower.sprout. SIGH. I'll have to get some more seeds and try again, and remember to put the netting over them this time...

10 April 2010

I went away on travel for work for a few days and came back and everything was in bloom. For a week the yard will look great-- all the azaleas and the dogwood and the lilac are in bloom. Then the blooms fall off and I remember how scraggly those azalea bushes are.

Of course, I saw bunny in the yard yesterday morning, so I need to get a fence up soon or there won't be any lettuce or radishes. The squirrels and chipmunks have already dug up and eaten most of my nasturium seeds and all the artichoke seeds (?!)